338 articles on aws — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
Transit Gateway inter-region peering lets you link regions through the AWS backbone, but you pay per-GB data processing on each side plus cross-region data transfer. For high-volume inter-region traffic the fees stack. Here is the cost breakdown.
Direct Connect adds port fees but slashes data transfer out to about $0.02 per GB versus $0.09 over the internet. For heavy, steady egress to your data center the savings can dwarf the port cost. Here is the break-even math.
Global Accelerator charges a fixed $0.025 per hour plus a per-GB premium, while CloudFront has no fixed fee and bills per GB and per request. They solve different problems, and picking the wrong one wastes money. Here is the cost comparison.
VPC Flow Logs are free to enable, but you pay to deliver them: about $0.50 per GB to CloudWatch Logs or less to S3. On a busy VPC that ingestion cost can surprise you. Here is how flow log pricing actually works.
CloudTrail management events are largely free, but data events cost $0.10 per 100,000 events, and high-volume S3 or Lambda logging can generate billions of them. Here is how data event pricing works and how to keep it in check.
AWS now charges about $0.005 per hour for every public IPv4 address, in use or idle, adding roughly $3.65 per month per address. For fleets with hundreds of public IPs the total is real. Here is how the charge works and how to cut it.
SSM Parameter Store standard parameters are free, while advanced parameters cost $0.05 each per month and higher-throughput API calls carry a fee. Knowing when you actually need advanced tier saves money over Secrets Manager. Here is the pricing.
Traffic between resources over private IPs in the same AZ is free, but the same traffic over public or Elastic IPs is charged even within a region. Using the wrong address turns free traffic into a per-GB bill. Here is how to keep it free.
How you structure AWS accounts and organizational units decides how clearly you can see and control cost. A good multi-account layout gives allocation for free; a flat single account fights you forever. Here is how to design it.
The AWS Cost and Usage Report is the most detailed billing data AWS produces, but it is raw and huge. Turning it into queryable, allocated cost data is a pipeline worth building. Here is the architecture.
On-demand, reserved instances, savings plans, and spot are four ways to pay for the same EC2 capacity, with discounts from zero to around 90 percent and very different commitments. Which mix is cheapest depends on how predictable and interruptible your workload is. Here is the side-by-side.
EKS and GKE both charge a control-plane fee and node compute, but their pricing details, autopilot options, and free-tier treatment differ enough to matter. Which cloud is cheaper for Kubernetes depends on cluster count and how you run nodes. Here is the comparison.
Windows Server and SQL Server licensing can dominate the cost of a Windows workload, and Azure's Hybrid Benefit lets you reuse existing licenses in ways that change the math versus AWS. Which cloud is cheaper depends on the licenses you already own. Here is the comparison.
EBS snapshots are cheap individually but accumulate silently: automated backups, forgotten manual snapshots, and orphaned volumes pile up until snapshot storage rivals or exceeds your live volume cost. Here is how to find and stop the creep.
T-family burstable instances (t3, t4g) are the cheapest EC2 option for low-average-CPU workloads, using a CPU credit system. Understand credits and unlimited mode or you will get throttled or hit with surprise charges. Here is how they cost out.
Dedicated Hosts give you a whole physical server, needed for BYOL licensing and hard isolation, but priced per host regardless of how full it is. Regular instances (and dedicated instances) are cheaper for almost everything else. Here is the cost tradeoff.
EC2 offers dozens of instance families (general purpose, compute, memory, storage, and accelerated) each tuned to a resource profile. Picking the right family for your workload is the first and biggest cost lever. Here is how they map.
An EC2 instance's price combines family and size, region, purchase model (on-demand, Spot, or commitment), operating system licensing, and attached resources. Understanding each component is how you control the largest line on most AWS bills. Here is the full breakdown.
EBS is block storage attached to one instance; EFS is a shared file system many instances mount at once. EFS costs more per GB but removes provisioning and scaling overhead. Here is how to choose on cost and fit.
Data egress (traffic leaving AWS to the internet, and between regions and AZs) is one of the most surprising and controllable line items. This checklist walks through the highest-impact ways to cut it, from CDN caching to architecture.
On EKS you can run pods on EC2 nodes you manage or on Fargate serverless capacity. Fargate removes node management and bills per pod, EC2 nodes are cheaper per unit but require you to run and pack them. Here is the cost tradeoff.
ElastiCache (Redis and Memcached) is priced per node by instance type, so node sizing and count drive the bill. Oversized memory, too many replicas, and the wrong node family are the common overspends. Here is how to size for cost.
EMR clusters combine EC2 compute, an EMR service fee, and storage, and they are easy to overspend on with idle clusters, on-demand core nodes, and oversized fleets. Here are the highest-impact levers to cut EMR cost.
GPU instances are the most expensive compute you can rent, from a few dollars an hour for inference cards to tens of dollars an hour for training clusters. Understanding what drives the price, and how to cut it, keeps GPU bills sane. Here is the breakdown.